Is This 2002 or 1941? New “Operation
Barbarossa”
Under Way; Europe
Pauses and Grieves, but Takes Issue With U.S.

FROM TUCSON, ARIZONAAMERICAN
AFFAIRS

HIGHLIGHTS

Tucson1.
Sappy 911 Soap Opera: Crass Is as Crass Does

Long Beach2.
Is This 2002 or 1941? New
“Operation Barbarossa”

New York 3. Europe Pauses and Grieves, but
Takes Issue With U.S.

(as do many Asian countries)

“Wave
a Little Flag and Become a Good Person?Ugly.” (Norman Mailer)

1.
Sappy 911 Soap Opera: Crass Is As Crass Does

Sappy
Commemorations Staged to Deflect Inquiry about Our Government’s Role in
Preamble to “911” Tragedy

TUCSON, Sep 16 - September 11 should have been the time for a somber
reflection.It should have
been the day Americans asked their government “what did the Bush
administration know and when did it know it?”

(as suggested by TiM in see “Dirty
Tricks with Dirty Bombs”, June 11).Instead, we were all subjected to nauseating, maudlin, sappy
“911” commemoration ceremonies and speeches parroted by all networks
in all manner and style.One
media commentator even called them “Sep 11 celebrations!?”No kidding.Worse,
nobody corrected him.

Well, maybe not all Americans allowed themselves to be subjected to
such brainwashing. Some of us
changed the channel, or switched the dial, or turned off the soap being
dished out by our government and its lamestream media.Which is exactly what this writer did the morning of September 11,
2002, as he was driving from Phoenix to Tucson.

I was in a somber, almost reverend, mood when I left Phoenix.I even thought of “writing” a 911 eulogy for our TiM readers
enroute to Tucson.I recalled
with vivid clarity where I was and what I did on that day a year ago, as I
am sure millions of Americans and other people around the world did.Some of my Australian friends, who watched the 911 tragedy unfold
in prime time due to time zone differences, told me later they thought it
was a movie.It seemed so
surreal.It was.

But my mood changed when I started listening to the soapy commentaries
on my car radio.It went from
somber reverence to benign anger to sarcastic laughter. I kept changing the stations but they all sounded the same.Finally, I turned off the darn thing and put in a CD.Johann Sebastian Bach. “Brandenburg
Concertos.”Finally
something that sounded appropriately grandiose and respectful for the
moment.

Once I got back to Tucson, I could not get myself to write anything.Every time I saw someone waving or sporting a flag on their car, I
cringed. I felt sick to my
stomach about how stupefied our nation has become.And I recalled the verses I wrote and the cartoon I created when I
saw similar signs during a road trip in early June:

So instead of writing my eulogy, I climbed it.Climbed it?Yes.
I dedicated a mountain hike
on one of the toughest trails in the Sabino Canyon area of the Catalina
Foothills to all the innocent victims of the September 11 tragedy.And I said a silent prayer for them at the mountain top (those of
you who want to join me on one of my earlier hikes on this trail, you can
check out the travel vignette “Tucson
Is Cool Even in Summer”).

It’s only now, five days later, that I am finally able
to get down to writing something about the 911 events in a calm,
dispassionate way.And the
first thing that comes to mind are some of the things that Norman Mailer
had said in a recent (Sep 8) exclusive (long!) interview for the London
Sunday Times (God forbid that any major media in the country of this
legendary writer’s birth would publish his words now that the Bush
“brown shirts” are roaming the countryside and controlling our
airwaves).Here’s an
excerpt, as published first by Matt Drudge:

Wave a Little Flag and Become a Good Person.Ugly.

"This
century is going to be the most awesome of all centuries to contemplate -
there is a real question whether human kind will get to the end of it...
America's so big, so powerful, and so vain ... I get angry when I see it
being less than it can be.

"The
British have a love of their country that is profound. They can revile it,
tell dirty stories about it. But deep down their patriotism is deep. In
America we're playing musical chairs - don't get caught without a flag or
you're out of the game. Why do we need all this reaffirmation? It's as if
we're a three hundred pound man who's seven feet tall, superbly shaped,
absolutely powerful, and every three minutes he's got to reaffirm the fact
that his arm pits have a wonderful odor. We don't need compulsive,
self-serving patriotism. It's odious...

"When
you have a great country it's your duty to be critical of it so it can
become even greater...

"Culturally,
emotionally America is growing more loutish, arrogant, and vain.

"I
detest this totally promiscuous patriotism. Wave a little flag and become
a good person? Ugly.

"If
we have a depression or fall into desperate economic times, I don't know
what's going to hold the country together...

"There's
just too much anger here, too much ruptured vanity, too much shock, too
much identity crisis. And worst of all, too much patriotism. Patriotism in
a country that's failing has a logical tendency to turn fascistic...

"Let's
suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some
city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280
million Americans. So, there's one chance in 28 million you're going to be
one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3,000
deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every
90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in
7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile
statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to
terror...

"One
of the things I've always found least attractive about Tony Blair was his
toadyish attitude toward Clinton...

"Clinton
made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90% as
intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know
that he couldn't possibly do the same, or the country would be run by
morons."

One of this writer’s friends, a U.S. Navy officer from
Florida with whom this writer had shared the above Mailer comments,
replied as follows:

It never
escapes me to notice drivers who threaten your life with reckless driving
who more often than chance would have it display a "God Bless
America" or a flag sticker along with a bumper sticker saying
something about Jesus being the Lord or a fish emblem, and a conspicuously
displayed Paroleman's Fraternity Donation sticker on the back other their
car/truck.

To which this writer responded:

Crass is
as crass does (paraphrasing "stupid is as stupid does" from
Forrest Gump). Flag-waving
and reckless driving are both crass acts by crass people.

To which our Florida naval officer replied:

It is
clear Normal Mailer describes what can be termed "teenage
mentality" -- love for flashy, obsessive-compulsive
attention-getting, loud and boisterous, in-your-face, sort of repetitively
redundant over and over again bullying behavior that lacks dignity and
self-respect. Thanks for your
Laconic but right-on-target reply.

During my Blacketts Ridge 911 memorial climb, I also kept
thinking about some of the things I wrote the morning of September 11,
2001.When I came back home, I looked them up and read them again.And I would not change a word I said a year ago.Here are some excerpts:

When
the "world's only superpower" and its allies bombed and killed
thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Serbia, Americans were told it
was just "collateral damage." After all, we, the "champions
of democracy and the free world," were only fighting the murderous
regimes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Some civilian casualties
were "regrettable, but unavoidable," the Pentagon, NATO or State
Dept. spokesmen told us.

Now
the tables have turned. Terrorism begets terrorism. Unnamed terrorists,
presumed to be "Islamic fundamentalists," have now killed
thousands of innocent Americans while fighting, what they think are, the
murderous regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Now Americans know
firsthand some of the terror the Baghdad or Belgrade residents felt when
NATO bombers unloaded their deadly cargo on them. The only thing missing
is the terrorists' spokesmen telling us now that "it was just
"collateral damage;" that "some civilian casualties were
regrettable, but unavoidable."

What
we did to Iraq and to Serbia was a case of state terrorism. What unnamed
terrorists did to us today was retaliation to state terrorism.
"Collateral damage" has come home to roost. "What goes
around, comes around." "He who plays with fire, gets burned by
fire." […]

Second,
such “hawks” never learn. One only needs to look at the Middle East
for an example of futility of violence. To stop anti-American terrorism,
Washington must stop its own state terrorism. Both brands of terrorism are
despicable and inexcusable.

The
only thing one can conclude from that is that George W. Bush must be a
part of the problem. As an Eastern European proverb says, “a fish always
stinks from the head.” A good CEO knows that he is responsible for
actions of his subordinates, whom he must hold accountable for the results
they deliver.

Harry
Truman knew that when he said, “the buck stops here” (meaning at the
White House). Evidently not so at the Bush’s White House.

It
is utterly amazing that no U.S. official has so far taken responsibility
for what happened on Sep. 11. No one is being held accountable. Is that
why Bush and his cohorts in the federal government are now trying to
deflect our attention and scrutiny away from themselves, by skipping proof
(of Osama bin Laden's culpability), and rushing straight from grieving to
retaliation?

---

And they keep on doing it one year later.All the schmaltz and soap enveloping the 911 commemoration
ceremonies was intended to deflect our attention from the main culprits -
our Washington officials whose policies and/or negligence precipitated the
Sep 11 attacks.

So once
again, it is time to ask, “what did the Bush administration know and
when did it know it?”

LONG BEACH, Sep 16 - We received the following letter from
Edward Boswell, a TiM reader from Long Beach, California:

Is this 2002 or 1941?

An
embittered underachiever with a taste for blood arises on the scene,
determined to undo the results of the last war. Backed by international
cartels, he moves toward unilateral action after gaining power under
questionable circumstances. He exhibits open contempt for existing laws
and established controls. Long held rights are rescinded in a government
announced emergency situation. People are jailed without legal rights or
release dates. Camps are planned. The government cloaks itself in secrecy.

Possessed
of a vision for a new world order, he orders his military into a full war
footing, with orders to prepare for pre-emptive strikes. Declaring himself
a patient and peaceful man, he cynically crouches toward war as the world
watches. After starting and ending one war within weeks, he sets his
sights on a former ally in what shapes up like a personal fight to the
death. The Military begins putting itself in place for a large invasion.
Is this an attack on Iraq in 2002 or one by Germany against Russia in
1941?

---

To which the TiM editor replied:

All
that’s missing is an appropriate code name.How about "Operation Barbarossa?"After all the Washington Goebbels-reincarnates have been
telling us that Saddam is a barbarian.

---

TiM Ed.: “Operation Barbarossa” was Hitler’s
code name for Germany's attack on the "Red Barbarians" - Stalin/Soviet Union
- that began on June 22,
1941.

--------------

3. Europe Pauses and Grieves, but
Takes Issue With U.S.

(as
do many Asian countries)

NEW YORK, Sep 12 - Unlike most of our electronic
lamestream media, some of the U.S. print media did show its readers the
other side of the coin - the way the rest of the world sees us
(Americans). Here's an excerpt from a New York Times Sep 12 report,
for example, about how the 911 remembrances in Europe and Asia:

[...] Foreigners still ached for
the United States, but they also took issue with it. They still deplored
the violence that was visited upon Americans, but they also wondered
whether Americans bore some culpability.

"It is monstrous, horrible
— I don't deny that," said Eveline Bureau, 50, of Paris.
"But the Americans didn't do anything to avoid what happened on
Sept. 11. They have put themselves in danger, and now they put us in
danger."

Last year, a day after Sept. 11, a
front-page editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde stated and
restated the phrase, "We are all American." But on Tuesday,
the same writer, Jean-Marie Colombani, in the same paper observed that
"the solidarity reflex from one year ago has been drowned in a wave
that leads one to believe that, in the world, we have all become
anti-American."

...Ms. Alexeyeva (speaking in
Moscow) also seemed to speak for many Russians when she added that
"Americans endured this suffering with honor." While a
majority of Russians said in a recent poll that Americans deserved what
happened to them, an even larger majority said they had a
"good" or "very good" opinion of the United States.

Initially, the foreigners who
lined up for hours to sign condolence books, laid flowers at American
embassies and bowed their heads in collective silence were reacting
viscerally to a sorrowful tragedy in the only way that made emotional
sense.

The foreign leaders who said they
stood without reservation beside the United States were making
statements in a vacuum it was not yet clear what standing beside the
United States would mean.

That was no longer the case once
the United States started waging war in Afghanistan; threatening to wage
war in Iraq; restricting some civil liberties; more aggressively
screening immigrants, and saying all the while that it would do what it
felt was necessary, even if allies disagreed.